Thousands Of Southern California 'Dreamers' Are Concerned About Trump Presidency
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Thousands of Southern California "Dreamers" are very concerned about the upcoming Trump presidency.
Dreamers are the young people brought to the U.S. by their parents -- without immigration documents -- when they were children.
Thursday night, KCAL9's Erica Nochlin reports from Commerce where dozens of Dreamers gathered to be honored with scholarships for college.
She said the air was filled with anxiety and it had nothing to do with school work.
Most of the honorees, like Claudia Merino, are undocumented and go to school and work with the help of President Obama's deferred action program called DACA.
"It has changed my life immensely," Merrno said.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to get rid of DACA so these students ambitions are now met with fear.
"It's a lot scary, a lot of emotions, are we going to get deported?," Merino said.
"It is scary to have that in mind, but no matter what, I'm going to go to school because education is very important to me," said Karen Mexa, also a DACA recipient.
Each of the DACA recipients provided person information to the government to be eligible for the program. They fear that info they gave can now be used against them next year.
California Senator Tony Mendoza says there is serious risk with the information being available.
"Now they can actually request it and get it without their permission. That would be scary," he says.
Not everyone agrees. Marguerite Telford -- who works with the Center for Immigration Studies -- says President Obama's executive order on DACA was not the way to go about it.
"It needs to go back to congress," she said.
"This is our home," says Merino who came to the U.S. when she was 5-yers-old.
On Thursday, three members of congress asked President Obama to pardon the 750,000 dreamers in the country but that does not appear to be happening, Nochlin reported.